Author: Purple Wyrm

Farewell Naveen

It has been a rather long time between entries, but I have a valid, although anything but good, excuse for this. In the early hours of Sunday the tenth of March Naveen Yawanarajah, one of my bosses, the guy who programmed the iNews system this weblog runs upon and an all round really great guy, died of a sudden heart attack. He was only 32. So things have been pretty tough going for the last two weeks both professionally and personally, and I haven’t been up to writing much.

I’m not going to write a vast long entry about this, because frankly I don’t feel like writing about it, and I don’t think anyone would really want to read it. However I feel I owe it to the guy to mention a few facts, so bear with me.

Naveen was born with four holes in his heart due to his mother contracting rubella during her pregnancy. At school he developed a passion for and talent with computers, and as a teenager wrote the first commercial software ever produced in Malaysia. In time he came to Perth and studied for a degree in computer science, despite his health problems, which included a trip to Melbourne for highly complex and experimental heart surgery. This actually went horribly wrong, and his heart stopped for a full 32 minutes on the table. Normally the surgeon would have declared death after such a period and given up, but he and the whole operating team had been so impressed by Naveen’s remarkable personality that they put the extra work in to bring him back. Even so it was painful months of recovery, although he never let this hold him back and with the support and encouragement of his family and friends he was even back to DJing comparatively soon afterwards, despite the fact that at times it was even a struggle to walk.

In 1996 he founded Gateway to Perth with Dale, and wrote an entire e-commerce system, GTP iCommerce, from scratch, when no-one else in Western Australia was even considering a locally based e-commerce enterprise. Over the years this system expanded to incorporate contact management, website maintenance and affiliate systems, and the company expanded from a partnership to a Propriety Limited, under the business name GTP iCommerce.

In the last month Naveen had applied for and been accepted into the Curtin PhD program, planning to develop and write a thesis on an online robotics control protocol. He was very excited about this, and once it was developed he planned to release it into the public domain, in his own words to “give something back” to the computing world. He’d given plenty back to the computing world already, but unfortunately his robotics work will now never happen.

Overall Naveen was an amazing person with an incredibly friendly and outgoing personality, and great sense of humour. In the two years that I worked with him I can honestly never remember seeing him in a bad mood even once. The sheer quality and quantity of work that he did for GTP means that we’ll able to carry on and thrive without him, but he was the true heart of the company, and we all miss him like hell.

See ya man.

(31st May 2002 – I must thank Naveen’s good friend Natalie, who contacted me to correct some mistakes in my account of his life. She also commented…

Just one more thing – you wrote that Naveen had a heart problem but he didn’t. He had a heart condition. I am sure you will agree that Naveen’s condition never stopped him from doing anything. I think he achieved more in his 32 years than many do in their whole life.

I couldn’t agree more)

But onto happier matters.

On Friday night my brother Andrew finally *g* got around to holding a birthday dinner for me. This turned out to be a great night, and I would like to sincerely thank him,Travis, Katie, Lyndah, Elisabet, Kevin, Clare and Emma for organising/attending and putting up with me πŸ™‚ I also got some totally kick arse presents which were totally unnecessary but very appreciated, scratch lottery tickets, magnetic frogs, and an original Ra figurine from Stargate the movie, which has apparently been sitting on the shelf down at Valhalla since 1994.

The whole night went very well, the food was supplied in such copious amounts that numerous references to Babette’s Feast were made, and even the mushroom sauce for thevol-au-vaunts turned out all right after the third attempt. Extra points must go to Lyndah for managing the entire meal despite having eaten before coming. Also for the magnetic frogs, building towers of which proved a source of much entertainment when the evening started to wind down (and also for repeated amusing use of the phrase “cat’s arse”).

Thanks must go to especially to Clare for her many flattering comments about the Tales. Her comments were so flattering in fact that the upcoming Easter long weekend will probably see at least another chapter going up. And also much thanks for (when appointed buyer for the Clare/Kevin/Elisabet/Eric gift committee) going for the Ra model rather than the poster of the big breasted fantasy chick in armour. Even if that’s what you really wanted to get πŸ™‚

So all and all a good night. Even if I did sit out the climatic tea-towel fight:)

In other news I got a rather puzzling email the other day, asking what “my site” is about, and if you get money for joining. I am not sure if this is a genuine request for information, or a rather devious spam, and hence have not yet replied and probably won’t. In any case, let me clearly state here that there is no way to join Wyrmworld, or the Tales of the Geek Underclass (although I am considering an email subscription service to send out update announcements and occasional extra goodies), and if there is any way to make money out of them I have yet to discover it.T-Shirts anyone? πŸ™‚

That’s all I’ve got to say today. Updates should be more regular from now on.

PS: Yey! Ghostbusters DVD! Thanks Helen:-D

Fireworks!

The fireworks factory blew up on Wednesday.

I’m not kidding.

I was surprised though. I didn’t even know there was a fireworks factory in the city. I don’t think anyone else knew either, until it suddenly went up in a catastrophic explosion at about 9:00 in the morning. Sadly I was in a bus on the way to work a good 25km away at the time, so didn’t get to hear it, but the folks (about 15km away) did, which just goes to show what a large quantity of explosive all going up at the same time can accomplish sound-wise.

I did get to see the smoke though, it billowed in and surrounded the office at about 10:00, apparently having formed a long plume across the city that decided to touch down in Nedlands. This isn’t too surprising, on a cross section from Nedlands to the factory (in Carmel) the city is somewhat bowl shaped, with the factory up on the Darling Escarpment, and the office on the plateau to the west of the CBD. So given the prevalent easterlies at this time of year the smoke from anything burning in the hills will probably end up floating around the carpark. But it was still unexpected at the time.

Rather remarkably no-one was killed, or even injured by the explosion. There were only two employees at the factory at the time, and once it became clear that that little fire they accidently started was getting out of hand they did the sensible thing and ran like hell. The Carmel area is fairly sparsely populated and the authorities took control and evacuated everyone pretty quickly, so although there were fireworks shooting off in all directions, and numerous bushfires, no one was hurt. There’s been a lot of property damage though, not least smashed windows from the force of the initial blast. So we can resonably expect the fireworks company to have their arses sued off.

I’m watching Rage while writing this, and cannot help but notice how unbelievably awful both the song and video clip My Sacrifice by Creed are. The song is a drawn out, wailing bit of wuss rock with the lead singer moaning on and on in vaugue metaphors about how hard it is to be him (mind you with a haircut like that maybe he has a right to). The music is reminiscent of Live’s better work, but with all the stuff that makes Live’s better work actually better removed, leaving just a banal and pedestrian plodding soft-rock dirge. And it goes on forever.

The video clip is just the worst mishmash of pretentious and ponderous imagery I’ve ever seen. Blind old men, innocent young children, flooded cities with rowboats, wild animals, mermen, schoolbuses full of candles, and topping it all off a hurricane that throws cars and garbage around the street in some kind of symbol of the anguish and heartache of being a rich and succesful wuss rock band. And all of it in slow motion! The lead singer even reaches down and pulls himself out of the water, could you come up with a bigger cliche? It’s enough to make you puke.

On the other hand I quite like Alanis’s new song. I considered myself seriously over her music, but this new one, Hands Clean isn’t bad. And the video is OK too. Mind you, Under Rug Swept is one of the stupidest album, titles I’ve heard in quite some time.

Finally I cannot let it pass that the last Goon, the great Spike Milligan passed away earlier this week. Rather than try to write some kind of lengthy and boring obituary harping on about his undoubted genius, I figured I’d just quote one of my favourite of his poems…

Things that go ‘bump!’ in the night,
Should not really give one a fright,
It’s the hole in each ear,
That lets in the fear,
That and the absence of light,

(And I say we’re lost!)

I’m 26. Oh wow.

I am 26. I turned 26 last Thursday. This sucks.

Why does it suck you ask? Because it means I’m no longer young. Well of course I’m still young, I’m only 26 for crying out loud, but I’m not young young anymore. I am now well into my mid 20’s and racing towards my late 20’s. Before I have time to blink I’ll be 30, damnit.

I don’t want to be thirty!

The whole world seems intent on reminding me that I’m getting older. JJJ for instance has a whole bunch of competitions running at the moment for “young people”. Which they define as people between the ages of 16 and 25. OK, I’d never have actually entered any of these competitions, but the fact that I could have (until last week) was somehow reassuring. And now I can’t. Prohibited by the inexorable march of time, and ABC regulations. It’s enough to make you go out and buy a walking stick. And one of those squashy cloth caps.

So if anyone has a novel way to slow down time (short of accelerating the entire solar system to the speed of light while I stand around and wait) I’d very much like to hear from you (purveyors of wonder herbs, drugs, human growth hormone, immortality rings and hunza bread need not apply).

In more cheerful news Helen now has a weblog. It looks like an evil robot. And talks about F1 a lot. So go and check it out πŸ™‚

I’ve also added some useful (ha!) phrases to the Beginner’s Guide to Surfarian, including pick up lines and how to complain about a horse. So check that out too.

That is all.

Development Status Report: Boxed Set

Marilyn Manson has covered Tainted Love. It’s the end of the world.

But in other news I managed to fix the problems the system had with the Windows Latin-1 Extended Character set. All on company time too, one of the advantages of actually being, if not a developer, then certainly a code tinkerer for the people who’s website management tool you’ve perverted for your own personal use. So I (and all other iNews users) can now type Ζ’ † ‑ ‰ Ε  β€Ή Ε’ β€’ – β€” β„’ Ε‘ β€Ί Ε“ and ΕΈ with impunity.

Of course I am the only person ever likely to use said characters, but hey, it’s a feature, or an extension to the system, or something, and that has to be a good thing.

Doesn’t it?

Sh’ Issues

And just in case anyone was wondering, the question marks should be s’s with a little reverse circumflex above them. That’s what I put in, but JSP doesn’t seem to like them. Damn.

OK, I think I’ve fixed it. So long as you’re using a relatively recent browser, and I never try to edit that entry ever again. Talk about technology working at odds with itself. sheeze!

The Dreaded 14th

So here we are. The dreaded 14th. St-Valentines-Day-Massacre Day. The most romantic day of the year. Excuse me while I try to give a damn.

So how did I spend this blessed date? I went to work, came home, translated the Beachboys’ “Fun Fun Fun” into Surfarian (or tried to), then wrote this. Woo-hoo.

It’s been one of those days. The kind where you spend the better part of an hour trawling through hundreds of lines of code only to discover you’ve done something insanely obvious, like trying to assign a floating point decimal into a character array. The kind of day where clients ring you up with what seem to be a simple problem so you promise to have it fixed in ten minutes, then it turns out to be interminably complicated and you have to put up with disgruntled calls from said client for the rest of the afternoon. Only making matters worse is the fact that Dale is off whooping it up on Rottnest, Bevan is having a week off due to a personal bereavement and Naveen headed off around lunchtime to farewell some relatives going back to KL (all justifiable reasons not to be around, but still) leaving completely unqualified me alone to run the office (Want me to debug some code – No problem. Want me to talk to clients on the phone – What you say?).

I can’t prove that all this is down to the nefarious actions of the Archfiend Cupid, but I have my suspicions. It sounds like his work. Depech Mode may think God has a sick sense of humour, but I’d assign that particular attribute to the little bastard with the bow and arrow. We’ve never got on particularly well, and on this day in particular he always seems to put aside a little time from all the flying around and shooting at people to make things just that little less bearable for me. Call me paranoid, but I just don’t trust the little so-and-so. To quote Chris Stevens, he’s “too much of a kidder“.

Don’t worry about me. I’m just bitter. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow πŸ™‚

William Shatner Sings!

Well, regular readers (if any such beasts exist) will have noticed a bit of a change to thegood old Wyrmlog. I’ve finally given in to temptation and gone totally blogger, addingsome self indulgent lists of the books and music I like. I am justifying this by tellingmyself it’s a valid use of the gigantic territories of the whitespace (or indeedgreenspace) that formerly filled the right of the screen when you scrolled down pastthe first page, but am not entirely convinced.

The impetus behind this change is the infamous Stephanie, who has gone and gotherself a Blog. She has kindly linked from this to me, so protocol (not to mention the fact that we’re friends so I’d link to her blog anyway) demands I link backto her. This of course required insertion of a link section, which required a redesign, soI decided to go the whole hog. And here we are. Oink Oink.

So go and check her Blog out. At the moment it mostly seems to be a lot ofcomplaining about the horrors of being an IB student along with occasional referencesto musical theatre, but this is bound to change when she goes off to College. We cansafely assume it will then consist of a lot of complaining about the horrors of being aUT student, but at least (like all her work) it’ll be very well written and entertainingcomplaining πŸ˜‰

(You’re going to kill me now aren’t you Steph?)

In case anyone was wondering by the way, I don’t actually know Succa, I justenjoy his work. Hence the link. Getting very Canuck oriented this Log. I might as well add a link to Avalon and be done with it.

Talking of Canadians, I’ve recently downloaded a copy of William Shatner’s “Lucy inthe Sky With Diamonds” off his 1968 album “The Revealed Man”. This is possibly themost demented recording ever, easily beating his Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy’sbossa-nova “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” (Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins! The bravest littlehobbit of them all!).

The “song” takes in all the excesses of the saccharine, wholesome, reworked, PatBoone rock hits of the 1950s like “Tutti-Fruti”, but somehow manages to remaincompletely un-musical in the process. Fluttering harps, tinkling fairy bells, dementedstring and horn breaks match up with the female voice choir absolutely murdering thechorus to create a sound similar to that of smashing the Lawrence Welk orchestrainto a muzak factory. As if this isn’t enough you then have Shatner’s “unique”interpretation of the lyric smeared over the top like so much rancidbrylcreem.

Now I don’t know what sort of drugs Bill was taking back in the summer of love, butI’m sure he was taking them in the studio, as he variously moans, shouts, whispers,intones, shrieks, whines and grunts the lyric without even once approaching anythingthat could be called singing. The funniest moments of all are at the end of each verse,where the producers decided to slap on a primitive echo effect. Not only does thismean Shatner’s demented vocals go bouncing around the room like he’s recording atthe centre of the earth, but they completely cap out the frequency range of my PCspeakers, adding an entertaining metallic/static effect.

Needless to say I am completely in love with this entire appalling production, and findmyself wandering around idly muttering things like “MARSH-mallow Pies!!” and”TOWering Over your HEAD!!” then cackling inanely. Mind you this isn’t too muchdifferent from my normal behaviour, so no one has really noticed. Or at least no morethan usual.

Oink Oink.

Daring Lousy Guy

I’m rather pleased with myself.

After almost a year of trying to figure out exactly what the lyrics of Shivaree’s very catchy yet disturbingly violent song Daring Lousy Guy are actually about, I’ve cracked it. The answer? Nothing really.

It should be noted that I cannot actually claim to have reached this stunning conclusion through anything but sheer blind luck, specifically my stumbling over a page on www.rinkworks.com that explains it all. Not that the page is actually about Shivaree, or indeed song lyrics, it’s in their “Things People Said” section, and lists a number of appalingly bad English subtitles from Hong Kong martial art films. On perusing this list it became astoundingly clear to me that most of the song lyric is built from these quotes, strung together to create at least a semblance of a storyline.

For example, the song….

Your big face went and hurt my instep,
And I feel very cold,
Just what gives you the nerve to die here?
End my game and fold,

The quotes…

“Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.” — Pedicab Driver

“The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?” — Lethal Panther

“Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?” — Armour of God

Putting aside for a moment the concept of a film called “Pedicab Driver”, it may be noticed that there doesn’t appear to be a quote about ending games or folding. We can probably put this down as improvisation neccessary for the rhyme. In any case I leave a full comparison between the lyrics (tip – it helps to select them with the mouse before reading) and the quotes to those interested enough to check them out for themselves.

So, does this mean Ambrosia and Duke are readers of Rinkworks? Or did Rinkworks and the band both harvest the information from one of those annoying novelty emails that float around the net pointing out the failures of other cultures to deal with our insanely complex language? I dunno. I’m just happy that I can finally sing along without worrying about exactly what kind of hideous massacre I might be advocating.

It is a shame that they couldn’t work Brain Theft’s immortal line “A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries” into the lyric though…

2002! Like, wow.

Well, the new year is upon us. And has been upon us for a good four days, which shows how organised I am. Happy 2002 to anyone who ever reads this thing.

I celebrated the new year in the truly Geeky fashion by going to bed at 10:00, and getting up early the next day to defrag my hard drive. Go to a party? Bah! I have better things to do! πŸ™‚

These better things by the way do not include making any new year’s resolutions. Year after year of broken resolutions strewn all over the figarative ground behind me (usually within a week of January 1st) convinced me to make a resolution that I could actually keep a few years back. That is, not to make any more new year’s resolutions ever. I have sucessfully kept this one ever since, and am hence rather proud of myself.

These better things on the other hand do seem to include even more updates to The Beginners Guide to Surfarian, including a major change to the orthography. I’m obviously in a linguistic mood at the moment. The review of The Fellowship of the Ring is underway, but seems to have decided to become a gigantic essay, so I don’t know when it’ll be available or indeed finished. And that’s about it.

I’m outa here

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